"If so, Aubrey, may many years pass before that inheritance be mine! Why should those years that might produce so much lie fallow? But though I would not affect an unreal delicacy, and disown my chance of future fortune, yet you must remember that it is a matter possible, not certain. My birthright gives me no claim over my uncle, whose estates are in his own gift; and favour, even in the good, is a wind which varies without power on our side to calculate the season or the cause. However this be,--and I love the person on whom fortune depends so much that I cannot, without pain, speak of the mere chance of its passing from his possession into mine,--you will own at least that I shall not hereafter deserve wealth the less for the advantages of experience." "Alas!" said Aubrey, raising his eyes, "the worship of our Father in Heaven finds us ample cause for occupation, even in retirement; and the more we mix with His creatures, the more, I fear, we may forget the Creator. But if it must be so, I will pray for you, Morton; and you will remember that the powerless and poor Aubrey can still lift up his voice in your behalf." As Aubrey thus spoke, I looked with mingled envy and admiration upon the countenance beside me, which the beauty of a spirit seemed at once to soften and to exalt. Since our conference had begun, the dusk of twilight had melted away; and the moon had called into lustre--living, indeed, but unlike the common and unhallowing life of day--the wood and herbage, and silent variations of hill and valley, which slept around us; and, as the still and shadowy light fell over the upward face of my brother, it gave to his features an additional, and not wholly earth-born, solemnity of expression. There was indeed in his face and air that from which the painter of a seraph might not have disdained to copy: something resembling the vision of an angel in the dark eyes that swam with tears, in which emotion had so little of mortal dross; in the youthful and soft cheeks, which the earnestness of divine thought had refined by a pale but transparent hue; in the high and unclouded forehead, over which the hair, parted in the centre, fell in long and wavelike curls; and in the lips, silent, yet moving with internal prayer, which seemed the more fervent, because unheard.